Men Are Happier Than Women At Work, But It Depends On The Job Role And Where You’re Based

How has gender impacted work life during the pandemic? This is the question WorkL For Business’ annual report into gender inequality in the workplace answers, taking data from over 20,000 employees during the lockdown; some based in the office, some working from home.

Men have won in the happiness at work race over the last 12 months, coming out as slightly happier than females at work (69.4 v 67.9). However, when looking at the scores from just the home workers, women are happier than men (72.1 v 71.4).

The biggest differences between males and females’ happiness at work are connected to Lord Mark Price’s (Founder of WorkL for Business) Six Steps to Workplace Happiness. Three of these steps, Empowerment, Well-being and Reward & Recognition all differ significantly between genders.

More specifically, females score lower than males on Empowerment, Well-being and Reward & Recognition while the scores are very similar for Information sharing, Instilling pride and job satisfaction. In contrast, women feel more Empowered when working from home compared to the office (74.8 WFH v 66.5 WFO) and they feel that their Well-being is better (78.5 WFH v 64.1 WFO).

The data has shown that the happiness at work gap between genders is driven by the types of jobs that females and males do. Females are more likely to work in Admin and Sales & Customer Service, and less likely than males to be Managers & Directors, Skilled Trades or Machine Operatives. In the Construction, Agriculture & Utilities and Professional & Scientific sectors, females are less happy than their male counterparts. This suggests that as these sectors have more male than female employees, that women are happier working in an environment with a more balanced workforce. The Happiest employees are Managers & Directors, who are more likely to be males (74.6).

How does workplace happiness differ between managers and non-managers when looking at gender? Well, managers tend to be happier than non-managers and females are also less likely to be managers (29 compared with 41 for males). For managers, the scores are very similar for males and females, while for non-managers females have notably lower scores for Well-being (62.2 v 65.2), Empowerment (63.3 v 65.7) and Reward & recognition (65.3 v 66.9).

Lord Mark Price, Founder of WorkL For Business comments; “Our report reveals that on the whole, men have been happier with their working life compared to women during the pandemic. However, as we look closer, women working from home overtake men also working from home in the happiness score. The scores show that Empowerment is a big driver here; females are being given more autonomy over their work at home, so are scoring happier overall. Will we see more women permanently ditch the commute and create a home office rather than work 9-5pm in the office with a commute? Men appear to be happier at work from the office away from home life, so time will tell if we’ll also see a gender split as we return back to the office.”